Ignorant of Emptiness, It Is Still Wild Fox Chan

Question: For sentient beings at the stage of eliminating evil and cultivating goodness, can they directly engage in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) to observe that all evil dharmas are the nature of tathāgatagarbha, that in essence they are all the tathāgatagarbha? Some people advocate that those who have violated the precepts can use the formless repentance method to extinguish their karmic offenses, and that after enlightenment their conduct of precepts will become pure. Is this approach appropriate?

Answer: Cultivation is arranged according to an individual's spiritual faculties and specific circumstances; one should always cultivate in proper sequence and must not skip stages or leap ahead. Otherwise, it is easy to fall into the deluded phenomenon of wrongly grasping emptiness, and then into wild fox Chan, resulting in even heavier karmic obstructions, causing one's cultivation to advance openly while regressing in secret.

For sentient beings at the stage of eliminating evil and cultivating goodness, if they directly contemplate that evil dharmas are the nature of tathāgatagarbha, two different results may occur. One result is that they understand the tathāgatagarbha is empty, and evil dharmas are also empty, so they feel there is no need to create any more evil dharmas, and thus their mind gradually becomes purified—this is the result of contemplative practice for sentient beings of great spiritual faculties. The other result is that they do not care about creating evil karma, do not restrain their own minds, and abandon themselves to licentiousness, because they feel that evil dharmas are also dharmas of the tathāgatagarbha, that there is no need to be attached to evil dharmas, that one may create evil at will—since everything is the emptiness (śūnyatā) of the tathāgatagarbha anyway, there is no real evil dharma, and by taking refuge in the tathāgatagarbha there would be no evil dharmas or evil retribution. This is the wrong view (mithyā-dṛṣṭi) and misunderstanding of foolish people of inferior faculties, and the retribution will be unwholesome.

Many people consider themselves to be of great spiritual faculties, but in fact, in the Sahā world at present, people of great spiritual faculties are extremely, extremely rare; their afflictions and karmic obstructions are by no means light. Therefore, in cultivation, when one should eliminate evil, one should eliminate evil; when one should cultivate goodness, one should cultivate goodness. Do not skip over this stage and neglect the transformation of one's wholesome and unwholesome mental nature, immersing oneself single-mindedly in the principle while remaining confused and inverted in actual conduct. If one regards both wholesome and unwholesome dharmas as that kind of emptiness of the tathāgatagarbha, neither eliminating evil nor cultivating goodness, then evil karma obstructs, wholesome dharmas give no support, and merit is incomplete—how could one perfect precepts, meditation (samādhi), and wisdom so as to see the Path? If emptiness hangs on one's lips, can the mind truly become empty? Not at all. If the mind is not empty, the retribution remains as before, and liberation is still not attained.

By the same reasoning, when those who have violated the precepts use the formless repentance to repent of their offenses, hoping to extinguish their karmic offenses, I fear that ordinary people cannot see true reality and cannot extinguish their offenses and dissolve their karma. Without seeing true reality, how can karmic offenses be dissolved? Then what kind of person can use the repentance of true reality to repent of offenses? It should be those who are not far from seeing the Path, whose cultivation of the thirty-seven aids to the Path and the six perfections is approaching completion, whose mental nature is inclined toward goodness, and whose karmic obstructions have become light. When such conditions ripen, with the blessing of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, through the repentance of true reality they can see true reality, and thereby extinguish offenses and dissolve karma.

After some people study the Mahāyāna dharma, they easily find excuses for their evil conduct, saying that even if these bad deeds were done, they were not truly done—it does not matter, it is all empty. Thus they feel at ease, without a sense of shame, their evil minds unchanged and their wholesome minds not manifesting. Being deluded in this way about emptiness (śūnyatā), they are still engaged in wild fox Chan and cannot escape the judgment of cause and effect.